The India stand-in captain Smriti Mandhana said that the five-year wait for winning a T20I series at home did not “reflect” on the strength of the team, a fact reiterated by her before the series decider here on Thursday. Coming into bat, India made an impressive display of batting. Mandhana laid the platform with 77; 47b; before Richa Ghosh (54; 21b) shared the joint-fastest fifty record for an innings to score their highest-ever T20I total of 217/4. To this, the West Indies managed only 157 runs in 9 wickets, leaving India to end the three-match series 2-1, which is the first time that they have achieved this at home since 2019.
“I told the girls after the last match that it has been five years that we have not won a T20I series. That doesn’t reflect the team we are,” Mandhana said.
“The fact that today we’ve brought that chance to them, we really want to focus on keeping doing the right things,” said Mandhana.
Mandhana hit her third fifty plus as she continued her flamboyance from the ODI series in Australia, where she finished the contest by scoring a century in the last match. “The batting line-up that we had, there were a few youngsters coming in, so there was a bit of added responsibility and that kind of thing goes well if you really put your head into it, and when I do that, I probably bat better.” “We lost all three tosses, so had to bat first and that is the harder thing to do (here). Really happy we could put up (a score) and loved the way Richa batted.” On the absence of Harmanpreet Kaur, she said: “Harman has been a pillar in the middle-order. Whenever she is there, you know that if something happens, she will be there.” She also praised ex-learner Raghvi Bist for his fine 22-ball score of 31 not out.
“The girls did really well today,” Richa said. “Raghvi was really impressive with the bat today. She came in with lots of intent and hitting her fourth or fifth ball for six. I wouldn’t have been able to do that in my second match.” The Player-of-the-Match also credited a strong opening for the win for the team.
“We had a brilliant start, the way everyone batted. I just wanted to continue that and whenever the ball was in my slot, I tried to hit it,” added Richa
“In those nets, you know, I’ll think about the match and try clearing it. If it is my first ball or last ball, it doesn’t matter because if it is in my slot, I am going to hit it. It feels so good when you contribute to such a win and for such a series victory,” West Indies captain Hayley Matthews admitted that their bowling discipline was severely lacking on an extremely difficult surface.
“We probably did not bowl as well as we wanted to. It was one of those wickets where we had very little margin for error. We were not at our best with the ball and missed our lengths more than we would have wanted,” Matthews added.
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